Q & ARMOUR

Battling to tell a tale of women grapplers

June 03, 2005|By Terry Armour

In the documentary "Lipstick & Dynamite," Chicago filmmaker Ruth Leitman tells the story of the pioneering first ladies of the wrestling ring. The women--including Gladys "Killem" Gillem, Ida May Martinez, Penny Banner and Lillian "The Fabulous Moolah" Ellison--ventured into this male-dominated world, overcoming several obstacles to make names for themselves in post-World War II America.

Terry sat down with Leitman to discuss the film, which opens Friday at Landmark's Century Centre Cinema. Leitman also has written a script for a feature film on the subject.

There's an obvious comparison between "Lipstick & Dynamite" and Penny Marshall's "A League of Their Own," which told the story of women's baseball during World War II.

Leitman: You can't help but make the association except for the fact it wasn't that the women were doing this because the men were at war. I think that's a big distinction. These women were wrestling because they wanted to. This was a way to make money.

What struck you about the early days of women's wrestling?

Leitman: I was never a wrestling fan--I didn't even know that women wrestled in the '30s, '40s and '50s. A friend told me about these women, that's how I became interested. As I started meeting them, it was a lot less about wrestling and a lot more about this universal idea that you are in a really difficult home life or a really difficult situation and somebody offers you $50 and a ticket out. You have no idea what's on the other side. That idea of, "Sure, I have nothing to lose." That was the thing that hooked me--for them to do something that women just did not do at that time.

As you began interviewing these women, you found out many interesting stories.

Leitman: That's one of the reasons I wrote the script [for a feature film]. There were so many stories about these women that really couldn't be told correctly in a documentary. These were the last living original girl wrestlers. There were all these tactics that the promoters would use. They would give them a taste of what they could have and then take it all away from them so that they were starving and they had to work even harder. The manipulation was really interesting to me. Here were these women that were so physically strong and they were so independent. They were powerful yet powerless.

And we're talking about the 1950s here. Women had yet to enter the work force.

Leitman: I would ask the women things like, "How could your mother say that it was OK for you to do this?" But the bottom line is a lot of these parents knew that they weren't offering their children anything. A lot of them had the foresight that their children could have a better life. They were all poor so there was this whole idea of, "Don't worry, Mom, I'm going to make it rich. I am going to be OK." Of course, most of them didn't. There also was this constant threat of banning girl wrestling in many states. People thought it was lewd.

How were you able to track down the wrestlers?

Leitman: They have contact with each other through these reunions. There's this reunion from the film where they go to Mobile, Ala., every year. That's how they started reconnecting with each other because they weren't in touch with each other all these years. They didn't really know each other. They would wrestle each other and keep moving on.

As you interviewed these women, did you get the growing sense that they were genuinely excited to tell their stories?

Leitman: They were pretty thankful, really, that their stories were finally able to be told. There's been all this anticipation time for them, "Will I get my moment in the sun?" These women are proud of their accomplishments and wanted the rest of the world to know their contributions to sports history. These women truly are survivors.